[3.5] Revision Spotlight: Bone Devil

[Aaron L]

I hate the demon's and devil's abilty to call others of their kind. I mean, I REALLY despise this.

Why?

Say you want to challenge your party with a devil with a CR 2 or 3 levels above your average party level. Should be a good fight right? Well, if said devil manages to summon a buddy, you could have a TPK on your hands.

If you prepare for this, by choosing a lower CR devil, and it fails to summon it's buddy, the "boss" encounter is ruined as it is too easy.

Actually, the CRs of creatures with summoning abilities are supposed to take into account the fact that they will summon others to fight with them.

 

[coyote6]

Look, another devil with a nice shiny AC and stat boost.

WotC revision teasing/hyping guys: Bored now.
Coordinate better, eh?

ACs are certainly going up, aren't they? Will the non-fighters be able to hit reliably? Will PCs' ACs also scale as much as the monsters seem to be?

Hey, the bone devil lost its ability to know alignment. Interesting -- make sneaking into Hell a lot easier (a group of PCs skulking about Brindinford in disguise had their cover blown via an osyluth using that ability -- "Hey, what's with the large group of burly heavily-laden good aligned people across from the evil temple? Let me check that out...").

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Actually, the CRs of creatures with summoning abilities are supposed to take into account the fact that they will summon others to fight with them.

Thats just it. We have a set CR based on a REALLY important variable. It's the difference between fighting one or two of these creatures.

I think Monte wrote an article about this problem somewhere.

 

[Ashardalon]

I would have preferred to see a true dragon (ad I'd have been really ahppy with the red ) for this spotlight. But at least it shows how natural attack will likely be handled for the purpose of overcoming DR.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I think the most noticable change is actually the hit point boost myself. That's a good thing--right now, evil outsiders usually die before they can use their interesting abilities.

Look, another devil with a nice shiny AC and stat boost.

WotC revision teasing/hyping guys: Bored now.
Coordinate better, eh?

ACs are certainly going up, aren't they? Will the non-fighters be able to hit reliably? Will PCs' ACs also scale as much as the monsters seem to be?

The CR increase partially compensates for the AC increase. However, I expect the answer to the first question is still no. Non-fighters don't look like they can expect to hit level appropriate monsters on a roll of less than 13 or 14 unless they've cast Divine Power or 3.5 introduces some new non-feat abilities that help them out (feats would help too of course, but most non-fighters don't have enough feats for it to matter much).

As for PCs ACs scaling as much as the monsters' ACs seem to be, I personally have my doubts. All of the revisions so far are decreasing PCs' abilities to improve their AC rather than increasing them. (The changes to Haste and Shield are the primary ones I'm thinking of).

In other news, it looks like the survival skill will be used for following tracks rather than the search skill as some had suggested.

The listing of Base Attack and Grapple in the same line is a bit confusing--I hope they change that. Everywhere else, attack bonusses in the X/Y format refer to a primary and secondary attack.

They also seem to be changing the way they list spell like and other abilities--instead of casting spells as an x-level sorceror, the Ossyluth has clvl 12 and charisma based DCs. His poison DC is consitution based. I wonder if we'll see any spell like abilities with physical stat based DCs.

 

[hong]

Actually, the CRs of creatures with summoning abilities are supposed to take into account the fact that they will summon others to fight with them.

Right, it's an average. Like, for instance, if you have your head in an oven and your feet in a bucket of ice water, on average your temperature is just fine.

 

[JChung2003]

Actually, the CRs of creatures with summoning abilities are supposed to take into account the fact that they will summon others to fight with them.

If so, then the CR's listed in the Monster Manual are very misleading.

Example:

A succubus (CR 9) can sometimes summon a balor (CR 18). The difference in difficulty between an encounter with a succubus and a succubus with a summoned balor is substantial, to say the least. Never mind that a succubus could also have several charmed thralls with her as well.

 

[Staffan]

Non-fighters don't look like they can expect to hit level appropriate monsters on a roll of less than 13 or 14 unless they've cast Divine Power or 3.5 introduces some new non-feat abilities that help them out (feats would help too of course, but most non-fighters don't have enough feats for it to matter much).

IMO, that's the way it's supposed to be. If everyone can reliably hit the monsters, what's the point of warrior-types having a higher attack bonus?

 

[Breakstone]

Right, it's an average. Like, for instance, if you have your head in an oven and your feet in a bucket of ice water, on average your temperature is just fine.

That's a good one, Hong.

But I agree- while the summon ability is great for campaign history and story (so THAT's how the demons so quickly took over the kingdom of Korinth, etc.), it's a killer on the battlefield.

 

[maddman75]

This (the succubus + balor) problem is just the issue that makes it a good idea to throw out the creative fictions known as CRs and just hand out ad hoc experience.